Innovative Approaches to Candidate Sourcing in a Competitive Market
Candidate sourcing can be a daunting task considering the number of options available to source talent. It becomes imperative to employ creative and innovative strategies for this to enable your company to stand out from other employers in today’s competitive talent market.
What is candidate sourcing?
Candidate sourcing is the process of actively searching for qualified candidates. You must engage with prospective candidates who can move into your talent pipeline to fill in either currently open positions or even future positions. Although only a few candidates will be actively looking for a new opportunity, many of them will be willing to engage and learn more about your company.
Every company is looking for effective candidate sourcing strategies that will help fill their funnel with qualified talent. Let us examine a few of them.
Talent sourcing tools
Recruiters and talent acquisition professionals spend a significant amount of time looking for potential candidates on social media platforms or professional networks. Time is lost in reviewing resumes and reaching out to individuals. Instead, they could use talent sourcing tools which are technology solutions which help build strong candidate pipelines by simplifying the process. Thee tools are extremely effective since they have search filters with which to search candidate databases. They also use AI to identify qualifies talent. Some of these tools also have communication capabilities with which they can send recruitment campaigns or even a personalized outreach to candidates. They also use data-driven decision making which improves sourcing over time.
Integrating AI into the recruitment process
Integrating AI into candidate sourcing helps create improved candidate experience and predictive analytics to determine likely candidates. AI can also be used to draft content for job descriptions, outreach emails to prospective candidates and even interview questions. This is a huge time saver. Machine learning algorithms can evaluate resumes and identify keywords that align with the job description, role and required skills.
Use unique sourcing channels
Many companies source candidates and share open roles on their career pages. Other candidate sourcing options include posting on job boards and job posting sites. Adopting newer sourcing channels can help reach the right candidates for your organization. For instance, there are industry-specific job boards or job boards that target specific demographics like women, neurodiverse talent or any underrepresented talent. You could try using some of these. There are also many skill-specific Slack communities or online communities that could be used for candidate sourcing. Campus recruitment or even professional networking groups are good sources for candidates.
Effective use of social media
Social media is very commonly used candidate sourcing channel. Several candidates looking for opportunities use social media too for their job search. Since many companies share job opportunities on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, it is important to have a creative method of posting so that your job posting can stand out. Your posts must have engaging content. You could run targeted ads on LinkedIn based on location, experience, and job title. You could use relevant keywords and hashtags to search for job seekers. Interesting videos with employee testimonials, interviews with leadership team members can be shared on social media. Sometimes it maybe a good idea to use a social media influencer to reach targeted job seekers.
Have a good employee value proposition (EVP)
Potential employees are always looking for a unique value proposition in jobs that they are seeking. Essentially, they want an answer to the question: “What’s in it for me?”. You need to have an EVP that is clear and concise. It must outline the compensation, benefits, and opportunities that an employee has in your company. Some companies have a brief EVP statement. However, others incorporate a slogan or mission that embodies the employer brand. Your EVP could include your vision, mission, and values statement. It could also include opportunities for professional development, compensation benefits or details about your work culture or even your social responsibility initiatives.
Promote your employer brand
An employer brand is defined as the way current, potential team members and other stakeholders perceive as to what it means to work in your company. A strong employer brand attracts and retains better talent. To enhance your employer brand, you could use employee testimonials in written or video formats and shared on your website and social media handles. Best workplace awards also add a sheen to the employer brand. Employees are eager to work in a company that has been recognized for their commitment to the employee experience. Another way to enhance your employer brand would be to send out a newsletter to your candidate database with blog posts, company updates or employee success stories. This will keep your company on top their recall.
Employee referral programs
You will be surprised at how effective team members are at candidate sourcing. If you have an effective employee referral program, it can be extremely beneficial. Employee referrals offer cost saving, highly qualified hires and increased engagement. Employee referrals are positive since people love to work with people they know. Referred employees are also likely to be more engaged since they have a personal connection with the company. A referral program can be standardized and incentivized as well.
Conclusion
You can look at your various candidate sourcing channels and use metrics to evaluate which is the best one for your company. You could also collect feedback from candidates on the sourcing and recruitment process. By tracking the data, you can focus your candidate sourcing approaches and reallocate your budgets to top-performing sources.
